The present invention relates to the field of board games. More particularly, the present invention relates to accessories for use with board games having multiple pieces that are drawn from a bag during the course of play.
Individuals throughout the world enjoy playing board games. Many of these board games include numerous game pieces that are randomly drawn during game play for placement on the game board and must be cleaned from the board following play. For example, the popular word games SCRABBLE.RTM. and UPWORDS.RTM. both include numerous game pieces or "tiles" having letters on each game piece. During play of the game, tiles are drawn by each player and played on the game board until all pieces have been drawn, played and remain on the board. It is typically important under the rules of such games that players are not allowed to look at the letter on a tile before it is chosen. Thus, players sometimes turn all of the tiles to be used during the game face down before they are drawn so that a player can not see the letter on any given tile before he or she chooses the tile. However, turning every game tile on its face can be a very tedious task which takes a significant amount of time. Therefore, rather than turning each game tile on its face, many players prefer to use a drawing bag from which tiles are blindly drawn as required during game play.
Game manufacturers often provide game piece storage bags that may also be used as drawing bags during game play. A typical storage bag provided with such a game is made of two pieces of non-transparent rectangular plastic. The two pieces of plastic are joined along three of the edges to form three seams with one edge left open, thus forming a bag for the game tiles. One such bag included with many SCRABBLE.RTM. games measures approximately 6.75 inches.times.7.25 inches and includes an additional 1.75 inch flap attached to one of the rectangular plastic pieces for folding over the bag opening and closing the opening during storage of the tiles. The bag may also be used as a drawing bag as it is non-transparent and is large enough for an average sized human to place his or her hand into the bag, grasp a tile, and remove his or her hand from the bag. The design of these bags is relatively simple and the bags are constructed of inexpensive parts, thus allowing the bags to be produced by the manufacturer with little expense. However, because the size of the bag opening is not flexible, and because the bag is a relatively small size, those with larger hands may experience some difficulty in placing their hand into the bag and grasping a tile. This is especially true if there are only a few tiles remaining in the bag such that the larger hand is required to reach all the way into the corners of the bag to obtain a tile. In addition, because the bag opening is inflexible and designed cheaply with inexpensive materials, the stresses placed on the relatively small, inflexible opening causes the bag to begin to tear along the seams at the bag opening following repeated placement of hands into the bag. Thus, it would be useful to provided a well constructed storage/drawing bag that could be produced cheaply while still providing a durable bag capable of accommodating players with hands of various sizes.
Another problem with the typical drawing bags provided by game manufacturers is that tiles easily escape the bag during game play. When drawing a tile from the bag, a player must pick up the bag, draw a tile from the bag and return it to the game table. When the player lays the bag down, much care must be taken to prevent tiles from escaping the bag. If the bag is laid down too quickly, a tile may easily slide along the plastic and out of the bag where it is exposed to all of the players. Thus, it would be useful to provide a drawing bag that would stand upright so that tiles held by the bag do not fall out of the bag during game play and players do not need to pick up the bag every time a tile is drawn.
Upon completion of a game, all or most of the game tiles have been placed on the game board, and the players are faced with the chore of picking up each and every tile and placing the tiles in the storage bag where the tiles are kept until further play is desired. Instead of picking up tiles individually, some players tip the game board and attempt to slide the tiles directly into the bag or to a central area where the pieces are more easily collected. Of course, allowing the tiles to slide from the board sometimes results in "runaway" tiles that do not end up in the desired location and fall to the floor where the tile is easily lost. Additionally, some game boards are constructed to prevent tiles from sliding from the playing surface, and thus the surface of the board can not be cleaned by simply tilting the board and allowing pieces to slide off. These game boards typically include a grid of plastic ribs that form indents or seats for the tiles and keep the tiles in place during play of the game should the game board be jarred, shaken or bumped. The tiles placed on these boards must be removed one-by-one and placed in the drawing bag.
One prior art device that attempts to solve the problem of players needing to remove pieces one-by-one from game boards is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,207,425 to Cohrs. The Cohrs patent discloses a plastic or cardboard device for handling game pieces to be cleaned from a game boards having indents for the game pieces. The device includes a base portion that fits over the edges of the game board. When the game board is flipped over, the game pieces fall into the base portion and funnel into a centrally located chimney. If a storage bag is fitted over the chimney, the game pieces may be funneled directly into the storage bag, thus making the player's task of removing game pieces from the game board easier. Unfortunately, the Cohrs device is a rather large rigid device which does not fit easily into a game box. Thus, if the Cohrs device is to be used to clean up a game, a player must remember the device, locate it and tote the device along with the game to the location of game play. Alternatively, if the device is to be stored in the game box, several steps must be taken to assemble and disassemble the device each time it is used. This only makes the task of cleaning up after game play more difficult. Therefore, the need exists for a clean up device that is easily and conveniently stored in a game box. Ideally, the device could also be used as a drawing bag such that removal of the game pieces from the game board following game play would result in game pieces being placed directly in the drawing bag, thus allowing for the immediate starting of a new game or immediate storage until further play is desired.